Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

I wrote this many years ago — perhaps twenty — but nothing has changed for the better.

Whirlwind, with Ozone

We have turned the very sky
against us, altered it,
maimed it like the lands
and waters, as though
from malice, or by some
invincible stupidity.
Yet it was not these,
but carelessness, a bit
of scientific love play,
a hundred years or two
of tinkering, of fixing,
of conquering nature.
No offense intended,
no harm meant. No one wanted
to warp and cripple
what couldn’t be fixed.
No one meant to do it.
But we did. And now we learn
to shrink from double burning
sun; we learn to hide,
and burrow, and lament.